Effects of indium and nitrogen compositions in GaInNAs quantum wells

GaInNAs is a new active material for optical fiber communications. It makes the long wavelength laser diode on GaAs substrates possible with hetero-epitaxial growth techniques. Due to a larger energy offset in the conduction band, it is expected that the temperature characteristics of GaInNAs lasers are better than those of conventional InP-based lasers. Fabrication of GaInNAs vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser is also easier because of well-established GaAs/AlGaAs distributed Bragg reflectors and Al/sub x/O/sub y/ confinement layers. Until now, continuous-wave operation of edge emitting laser at 1.3 /spl mu/m and pulsed operation of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser at 1.18 /spl mu/m were reported. In the report, we present the optical gain and related properties of the GaInNAs quantum well calculate by the k.p method with the envelope function approximation. We focus on the effects of each material composition in the quantum well structures on emission wavelength, transparency carrier density, differential gain, and carrier leakage.